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Baby born at migrant workers’ cramped Vancouver apartment to stay under the radar

Oscar Mata holds photos of his son at his home in Vancouver. Mata will be deported back to Mexico on Wednesday after a raid on an East Vancouver construction site by the Canada Border Services Agency earlier this week.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop Arlen Redekop
, Vancouver Sun

Oscar Mata Jr. came into the world on the floor of a 400-square-foot apartment in downtown Vancouver, home to his father, an undocumented worker from Mexico, and four other adults.

Registered midwife Marijke de Zwager set up a birthing pool on the floor of the cramped home, just as she does for other mothers who are unwilling or unable to deliver their babies in a hospital.

“In North America we don’t expect people to live like that, but people are living like that here and I think it’s important that we know,” she said Friday, recalling the birth two and a half years ago.

The picture of crowded rooms and fearful families has come into focus after Oscar Mata Sr., was busted Wednesday along with seven other undocumented workers in the high-profile Canada Border Services raid that was filmed for a reality TV series.

CBSA agents found him hiding in a closet at an East Vancouver construction site, rattled by the ambush-style raid and the cameras. He was anxious to comply with authorities and signed every piece of paper that was put in front of him — including a deportation order and a release form for Border Security, the reality TV series.

“Really, I was so scared, I just signed,” he said at his home Thursday evening, adding he knew his days in Canada were numbered. He is scheduled to be on a plane back to Mexico next week after working in Canada for five years as a house painter.

A mechanical engineer by training, he’d arrived in Vancouver from Guanajuato, Mexico on a six-month student visa in 2008 and ended up staying more by circumstance than a conscious decision. He met a girl, a fellow Mexican here on a tourist visa. Before long she was pregnant, and that’s when the challenges of life as an illegal worker in Canada began to take their toll.

They decided to contact de Zwager, who speaks Spanish, and pay about $3,000 in cash instalments rather than risk incurring much higher hospital bills and making their presence known to a branch of the government. A handful of women in similar circumstances seek her out each year, she says, usually paying her the same fees she would bill the provincial health care system.

De Zwager works at Pomegranate Community Midwives in East Vancouver and is also part of an informal group of health care providers who are concerned about the limited services for migrants who are either waiting for official landed immigrant status or are in Canada without proper papers.

While people who are in Canada illegally may fear that going to a hospital would result in them being reported to authorities, that wouldn’t happen unless there was a compelling reason such as a gunshot wound, according to health officials.

“No one who shows up at a hospital in B.C. is denied necessary medical care, with or without a Care Card or B.C. Services Card — and that certainly includes a woman in labour or childbirth,” Shannon Hagerman, director of communications for the Ministry of Health, said in a statement.

“If a patient does not have MSP (medical services plan) coverage or another form of insurance, birthing costs would be their responsibility.”

That could be about $2,800 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery, but de Zwager says she’s seen bills closer to $15,000 for a complex delivery by caesarean section.

“People are working here and when we have enough work for people, why can’t they stay? Why can’t we make it legal for them to be here? And if they’re going to be here with their families why can’t we make it easier for them to access better living arrangements and better access to health care?” she asked.

Mata’s girlfriend returned to Mexico with Oscar Junior last year. Mata says providing for a child as an illegal immigrant without access to health care proved too difficult.

“It’s hard here to have a family, to make money. The milk is expensive,” he says.

“When you are illegal, you don’t have too many options.”

Mata is not just a reluctant participant in a reality TV show, he’s one of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 undocumented workers in the Metro and Fraser regions, according to outreach worker Byron Cruz.

A member of Sanctuary Health, a non-profit network of health workers that provides health care for migrant and undocumented workers, Cruz says the real story of the migrant workers in our midst goes beyond border patrol busts. Many go without health care and other basic services, are exploited by their employers, and live in constant fear of deportation.

“Oscar had to go and talk to the (apartment) manager, ‘Please don’t call the police if you hear a woman screaming,’” he said.

Although this week’s raid has shone a spotlight on the issue of illegal migrant workers, Cruz says stories like the birth of Oscar Junior are occurring under the radar. Workers, their families and children are at risk due to health complications — particularly during pregnancy.

He would like Vancouver to take steps as Toronto has to declare the city a sanctuary space.

Toronto city council voted last month to become the first Canadian city to join other “sanctuary cities” and states in the U.S. that have pledged to ensure that “undocumented residents can access services without fear.”

The 36 American sanctuary cities include New York City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Oregon, Maine and Vermont have also declared themselves sanctuary states for undocumented migrants.

In the Toronto vote, only the deputy mayor and two councillors opposed the motion.

The Toronto Star reported that Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a vocal critic of the motion, argued that undocumented migrants are in Canada illegally and therefore do not deserve government services.

“We shouldn’t encourage them. We shouldn’t help them. We should not facilitate them. They are an insult to every immigrant who plays by the rule to get into the country. They are an insult to every immigrant who is waiting to enter this country legally,” said Minnan-Wong, as reported by The Star.

“It sends a message to the world that it is OK to break the law to come to Canada and it says that the City of Toronto is an accomplice to this law-breaking.”

“That was more about optics than anything else,” he said Friday in an interview.

Canada is already a sanctuary in practical terms, he says, because it would cost hospitals more than it’s worth to pursue the small number of women who aren’t citizens, yet give birth here.

“Birthing services are not being denied, so where’s the problem?

“They want you to make that leap that says, ‘If we go to the emergency room, we’re in jail or we’re deported and we’re denied medical services.’ And that’s bunk.”

Vancouver city councillor Adriane Carr says she hasn’t heard anyone talking about a sanctuary city here, but she can see how people without legal status in Canada may be afraid to go “above the radar.”

“So many immigrants come from situations in which they have every right to fear authority because they’ve been subject to persecution or violence.”

For Mata, Canada was a chance for a better life.

“I came because I wanted to study English,” Mata says with a thick accent. “After that, Mexico started (to seem like) no good and I said, ‘Oh I’m going to stay a little more time.”

Getting work as a painter through word of mouth was easy. His bosses loved him because he worked hard and didn’t complain. No one seemed to mind that he didn’t have a work permit. In fact, he says, no one ever asked for one.

“All the big bosses are Canadian,” he says. Although he didn’t have much contact with the men at the top of the chain. Most of the time he was hired by subcontractors.

“Those guys, they don’t ask too much questions.”

He says his departure from Vancouver next week will be bittersweet. He will be reunited with Oscar Junior in Mexico, but he’ll also be giving up the steady income he’s been sending to support him. Still, he hopes to return to Canada one day — this time with proper documentation — and worries about the impression Canadians will get when they see him broadcast on reality TV long after he is back in Mexico.

“I know my (mistake). I know I didn’t apply (for) my (immigration) status. But I’m not a bad person. I work hard.”

Oscar Mata holds photos of his son at his home in Vancouver. Mata will be deported back to Mexico on Wednesday after a raid on an East Vancouver construction site by the Canada Border Services Agency earlier this week.

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